Posted on 12/01/2025 10:39:15 PM PST by Morgana
A judge heard lawyers’ arguments Monday in a years-long lawsuit brought by a Jewish woman against Kentucky’s near-total abortion ban. A ruling could happen soon.
Jessica Kalb has been waiting over three years for a court to decide if Kentucky law, including its ban on abortion, violates her religious freedom and puts her at risk of criminal prosecution if, as a patient pursuing in vitro fertilization, she eventually discards any frozen embryos that she doesn’t need.
Kalb launched this lawsuit when she was 32 years old, just a few months after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed justices overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed Kentucky’s near-total abortion ban – outlawing abortion except in life-threatening cases – to take effect.
Now, Kalb is 35. At that age, pregnancies are considered higher-risk.
“We were trying to get all of this done before that milestone,” she said. “Because with geriatric pregnancies, there's a lot more risk.”
This is just one of many lawsuits challenging state-level abortion bans that have been fought across the country since the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated the national right to an abortion. Kalb originally filed her lawsuit alongside two other Jewish women, but ultimately the Kentucky Court of Appeals decided that she was the only one with the necessary legal standing to sue.
In a courtroom Monday, Kalb’s attorney, Aaron Kemper, argued that Kentucky law is “vague and unintelligible” concerning the legality of discarding frozen embryos from IVF in a state where human life is legally defined, in multiple statutes, as including embryos.
Kalb fears she and others could be charged with homicide if they successfully give birth through IVF and then discard their remaining unused embryos.
Kentucky Assistant Attorney General Lindsey Keiser argued Monday that the state’s abortion ban and homicide laws do not apply to discarded embryos.
“Nothing in Kentucky law prevents or criminalizes the plaintiff [Kalb] engaging in IVF or disposing of unimplanted embryos,” Keiser said.
Kemper, Kalb’s lawyer, disagreed.
“If the law was so clear and easy to understand, the attorney general would not have had to issue advisory opinions, the legislature would not be constantly amending these statutes, and we would not be here today,” he said.
Kalb’s case also challenges Kentucky’s abortion ban as a violation of her religious freedom. Her other attorney, Ben Potash, discussed Monday how Kentucky law’s assertion that life begins at conception is a religious belief preached by some Christian denominations, but that belief is not held by Jewish people like Kalb.
“And while there's not a prohibition on religiously motivated laws, there is a prohibition on saying, ‘This religious interpretation is given primacy,’” he said.
Potash said Kalb’s faith permits her to get an abortion if non-life-threatening complications occur in a pregnancy, but state law wouldn’t allow an abortion under those circumstances.
Keiser, with the attorney general’s office, argued that the Kentucky legislature stands on firm legal ground when it comes to the question of whether it can define when human life begins under state law. Keiser said Kalb’s religious freedom argument fails in part because she has failed to demonstrate a “substantial burden on the exercise of her religion.”
Potash contended that Kalb has proven a substantial burden, which he said is essentially “a forced choice between following what you believe God is telling you to do” or following what you believe the state is telling you to do.
At the end of Monday’s hearing, Jefferson County Circuit Court Judge Brian Edwards said he hopes to issue a ruling “as quickly as possible.”
I don't recall Abraham or Moses saying this was okay.
Someone tell these yentas to sock in it.
Sorry, honey, but the argument of “abortion ain’t murder in my religion” isn’t going to cut it. If it were, then we should allow “honor killings” here since they are legit in some Muslim jurisdictions.
That's because it's in Hezekiah 3:5.
Just kidding
Nicely and colorfully argued.
So, in theory, you could use your ‘religion’ to contest any law.
Yes, they did, and God said it had never even entered His mind.
Found a spelling error!
Matthew 18:6
But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea
As “Jewish” is both an ethnicity and a religion, we have no real way of knowing if this woman is just ethnically Jewish or, if religious, which Jewish group she belongs to - I think the “reform Judaism” has some extreme liberal - ECUSA-level liberal - synagogues.
This argument behind this lawsuit doesn’t justify abortion, but it does expose the underlying immorality of in vitro fertilization. Many Catholics and other proponents of the fact that life begins at conception must conclude that any human life l, even ones that begin in n a laboratory dish, cannot be discarded or placed in a freezer indefinitely.
“Potash said Kalb’s faith permits her to get an abortion if non-life-threatening complications occur in a pregnancy, but state law wouldn’t allow an abortion under those circumstances.”
I haven’t found a way to make her argument coherent. Something isn’t mandated just because it’s permitted. And if its not mandated, then forbidding it, legally, would not force her to violate her faith.
Just like the trash she takes out, right?
And it's not "need". It's "want".
A woman that callous about her own children that she brought into this world doesn't deserve to be a mother. And no child deserves a woman like that for a mother.
Roe v Wade set us up for this, because the ruling included philosophical and religious arguments regarding “ensoulment:” to enter the conversation - rather than simply sticking to science. If we allow philosophical and religious reasons to define legal personhood we can argue that ANYBODY lacks legal personhood. It’s what Hitler did in order to be able to kill the Jews - first defining them outside of legal personhood so that killing them was technically legal.
This woman has no understanding of either the Bible or her own people’s history.
Ultimately what this comes down to is money. The reason they create a bunch of embryos is to save money in case the embryos fail to implant or thrive. They mass-produce them “just in case”. I think the only real ethical solution to this is to only create one embryo at a time so there aren’t any tiny human beings legally defined as “leftovers” set for the garbage pile.
Another option would be adopting out those embryos, or attempting to implant several at a time over several years so that each embryo has been given a chance to live but perhaps dies naturally.
The ironic thing is that Pro-Life Advocates often use Scriptures from the Old Testament to prove their point:
Psalm 139:13-14, Jeremiah 1:5, Psalm 22:9-10, Genesis 1:27, etc.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bible+verses+that+support+pro+life&t=osx&ia=web
Or only create as many embryos as the woman is willing to care for if they survive. If she was willing to raise 5 children, for instance, she could have 5 embryos created and then even if all the embryos survive she wouldn’t have any she “needs” to kill. And even if some of them don’t survive, she may still get 1 living child.
It's a "religious freedom" issue so it's not merely a question her religion allowing abortion.
And by making it a "Jewish" question she tries to use all other Jews as ideological human shields.
Other members of her religion falsely call it various flavors of "Christianity" depending on each their own ancestries.
The Jewish position on abortion is not identical to that of the Catholic Church. This is true. Time was when the teaching of Fundamentalist Protestants on the subject were also different (remember "Never let your wife have a baby in a Catholic hospital"?).
Two points:
I can guarantee you that this lady is not Orthodox. Meanwhile abortion is the number one cause of secular Jews and they seem to think that makes up the whole of the Jewish religion.
Judaism is a religion of Divine Law. The point is that G-d is the boss. He determines everything. The issue of abortion is also a matter of Divine Law. Most of the time it is absolutely forbidden. On a few occasions (very rare) it may be mandatory. But this is determined by the Laws of G-d and not those of man or of "natural law." (Also, the Noahide Laws on abortion that apply to non-Jews are much stricter than the Torah Law to Jews.)
It is really a shame that so many people who claim to love the Jews don't have the slightest familiarity with the Jewish religion. Judaism is not about "religious freedom." Ancient Israel had no religious freedom. It is about living a life that is wholly dedicated to submission to the Laws and Will of G-d.
I wish FReepers would stop letting radicals and wackos define the Jewish religion for them and learn a little about it themselves.
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